Beam 2023 Week #6 - Calling all Bridgoors!

Covering February 6th - February 12th 2023

Feb 14, 2023

Beam News!

A big week for Beam with the testing of the Beam Dex and Bridges going full steam, with the Bridges launching to mainnet, and the DEX gearing up to follow suit. Dive in and check out the latest on that testing, and if you haven’t already, join us as we prepare for launch!

Beam Bridge

The Beam Bridges are here, with deployment on mainnet having been made, and testing continuing post production. For now the Bridges are handling Eth to Beam bridging of assets, and will later enable that of Beam and BeamX, along with other Confidential Assets, to venture to the Ethereum network as ERC20 tokens.

This week there will be a number of resources pushed out, from guides to audits, and from there the official announcement will be made. In the meantime you can head to the Beam desktop wallet and find the Bridges app in the Dapp store.

As with any Dapp, be sure to take caution with the early releases, and use smaller amounts that you feel comfortable with. The testing is ongoing on mainnet, and if you face any issues or have any feedback, jump into the Telegram and let us all know.

Beam DEX

A Telegram group has been set up for those wishing to test the Beam AMM based DEX. This is a early testing phase prior to open testing on Dappnet. So far the group has hit the ground running, already having reported 30 issues / improvements to the DEX Dapp. Although the Asset Minter Dapp is fully functional on Dappnet, it is awaiting many a UI improvement. This didn’t stop the DEX testers from getting amongst and having a play around. Minting Assets to create new pools on the Beam DEX, and adding some valuable feedback on both the Dex and Asset Minter Dapps.

If you would like to get involved with the early testing of the Beam DEX, please tag Alex Romanov (@bigromanov) in the Beam Telegram channel and let him know!

Beam Shaders

With the ongoing DEX testing, there has been many a great discussion in the Telegram chat, a lot of which revolves around that of Beam Shaders. The main takeaways from the conversation were:

Beam Shaders have two identifiers: ShaderID and ContractID
ShaderID is the hash of the shader bytecode and defines the type of contract
ContractID is the hash of the ShaderID and deployment parameters, and is unique to each instance of a contract
Contracts are upgradable, and can upgrade themselves by calling the UpdateShader() function
Contracts can restrict certain functionality to authorized users by requiring specific methods to be signed by specific keys
Contracts can also be set not to upgrade and have the code fixed as is
Contracts can have multiple admins and support scheduled upgrades
All contract data and arguments are visible to everyone on the blockchain
Beam's explorer node returns detailed information about the contracts, including their Shader IDs

If you want to get involved with the DEX testing, and learn more about Shaders, let us know in the Telegram channel to join the DEX testing channel, or jump into the Developer support group, and check out the latest Beam Smart Contract Documentation.

HW Wallet

Work on the HW wallet is nearing completion, with the recent version released several days ago overcoming the auto lock issue with the devices that was interfering with the online transactions.

To follow the progress you can check out the latest on the Beam Github!

Beam Space

The last Beam Space we covered the Beam Bridges and explored the future of decentralised and private applications. If you missed it, you can check out the full Space below on the Beam Youtube page!